Central Kalahari, Mahurushele campsite

Water consumption, Drinking : 26l
Water consumption, Washing : 30l
Fuel consumption : Fuel gauge shows just below half.

Had a great nights sleep punctuated by trips to take a leak due to the amount of water I drank yesterday but the temperature was cool and the sleeping bag warm.  The campsite is under some really big trees which give only dappled shade so I rigged up our awning to give us some solid shade during midday when we will need it.  Had a very nice cup of coffee while I spent a couple of hours writing up the blog while the boys took it in turns to crush cans.  They haven't been able to do it for a couple of days because we have been travelling but today is an easy day and they took to it with gusto.

Seeing as we were having a lazy day, the menu for the morning was diced asparagus and tomato scrambled eggs which was delicious and after that was cleared away we managed to do absolutely nothing the entire day until the heat of the day had dissipated.

Graeme and the boys found a dead tree branch and dragged it into camp and the boys had great fun trying to chop it up with an axe which did work after a fashion.  The problem came in when they stripped the tree of all the smaller branches which meant a covering of thorns on the ground; not such a good idea as we found out.  Graeme and I spent about 45minutes carefully collecting all the twigs and thorns and putting them on a bonfire that james created but graeme definitely won't be collecting branches like that again.

I had to run the car for a couple of hours because we were down to 40% already for some reason, I'm not sure why.  It's a bit annoying having the chug, chug of the diesel in the background but I would rather keep the fridge going properly.  I tried to estimate how much fuel is used when idling and it appears to equate to 4km/hr or approximately 1/2 a litre per hour.

The picture above gives some indication of what the bushes do, when we left johannesburg, there were no scratches on this sticker.

Caron spent most of the day wandering around the camp looking for birds while Gill read something in the shade of the tent and sometimes I'm not so sure she was actually reading.

Although it was very tempting to do nothing the entire day we felt that we really should do something so we carried the table and drinks and snacks to the middle of the pan much to Caron's consternation.  She was worried about lions after our scare the previous evening but given that the gemsbok and the springbok were unflustered, we took that as a sign that all was well.  I guess that predators specialise in keeping prey unflustered until the very last moment but it does give one a comforting feeling having them around and calm.  Having sundowners on the middle of these pans is going to be one the memorable memories of the trip.  We spent quite some time watching a family of bat eared foxes that were vroettling around looking for food we presume.

Back at the campsite shortly after dark we made a fire with lots of wood since we don't really have any restrictions anymore and we don't want to go back with wood.  James, the younger one, has taken to making fires with alacrity and it's very interesting to see how he copies the adults in how they go about doing things.  As a result, we had a really huge fire for the evening which was a fitting way to end our last night in the bush.